Roy Mark

As if a looming regulatory overhaul is not enough to worry the nation’s largest telecommunications companies, the Department of Justice is reportedly opening an antitrust investigation into the consumer practices of such powerhouse providers as AT&T and Verizon.According to the Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice has began a preliminary probe that is likely […]

The daily NASA report from Mars is the same day after day: “Spirit remains positioned on the west side of Home Plate.” In other words, Spirit, one of two Mars rovers, is stuck on the side of a sand dune dubbed Troy and has been since May 6. Will this be the final resting place […]

Buzz Aldrin: Forget the Moon, Aim for Mars by Roy Mark Outsource Moon to International Consortium NASA should “Scrap our go-it-alone lunar program and let international partners—China, Europe, Russia, India and Japan-do the lion’s share of the planning, technical development and funding.” Under Aldrin’s plan, NASA would participate in the international lunar program by providing […]

The Office of Management and Budget rolled out its latest transparency tool June 30 with the debut of an IT Dashboard. A part of USASpending.gov, the dashboard allows users to track federal IT initiatives through a Web browser.Deploying charts and graphs, the dashboard displays federal IT spending information by agency and department. Users can compile […]

TerreStar Networks launched the world’s largest commercial satellite July 1, aiming to deliver 3G mobile voice, data and video communications to devices as compact as an iPhone. The TerreStar-1 took off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.The $300 million, 15,000-lb. TerriStar-1 is equipped with a 59-foot deployable reflector and employs an S-Band feed array capable […]

NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency) will communicate for the final time June 30 with Ulysses, the nuclear-powered solar orbiter that has been faithfully relaying data back to Earth for 18 years. Ulysses has charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun since it was launched in 1990.Ulysses was originally […]

Using nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images, NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth June 29 that covers more of the planet than ever before. The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from images from NASA’s Terra spacecraft and the Aster (Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection […]

The Supreme Court refused June 29 to hear an appeal of a lower court decision that permits Cablevision to offer remote digital video recording. The service allows consumers to record, store and playback recordings on computer servers maintained by Cablevision instead of DVRs owned by customers.Film studios and major broadcast networks opposed Cablevision’s plans and […]

Count former astronaut Buzz Aldrin among those who think NASA is off target with its current plans to reach the moon by 2020. Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon’s surface during the historic 1969 Apollo 11 mission, calls the new race to the moon a “glorified rehash of what we did 40 […]

Signs of life-of some sort, possibly-may be percolating beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.Using data gained from the Cassini Equinox Mission, scientists have detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn’s outermost ring. The salty ice indicates that Enceladus, which primarily replenishes the ring with material from geysers or plumes on the moon’s surface, […]